But when she answered Vivien's questions, after plying her with innumerable enquiries, she admitted with a blush that Heinrich, the German sergeant, with whom she had first cohabited by constraint, had recently married her at the Mairie, though the Curé had refused to perform the religious service. Heinrich was now invariably kind and worked hard on the farm. He hoped by diligently supplying the officers' messes in Brussels with poultry and vegetables that he and his assistants—two corporals—might be overlooked and not sent back into the fighting ranks. As to her daughters, after a few months of promiscuity—a terrible time that Mme. Oudekens wanted to forget—they had been assigned to the two corporals as their exclusive property. They were both of them about to become mothers, and if no one interfered, as soon as this accursed War was over their men would marry them. "But," said Vivie, "suppose your husband and these corporals are married already, in Germany?" "Qu'est-ce-que ça fait?" said Mme. Oudekens. "C'est si loin." By making these little concessions she had already saved her youngest son from deportation to Germany.
The enormous demands for food in Brussels, which in 1918 had a floating population of over a million and where the Germans were turning large dogs into pemmican, had tripled the value of all productive farms so near the capital as those round Tervueren, especially now the railway service was reopened. Many of the peasants were making huge fortunes in complicity with some German soldier-partner.
In Brussels itself, soldiers often sided with the people against the odious "polizei," the intolerable German spies and police agents. Conflicts would sometimes occur in the trams and the streets when the German police endeavoured to arrest citizens for reading the Times or La Libre Belgique, or for saying disrespectful things about the Emperor.
The tremendous rush of the German offensive onward to the Marne, Somme, and Ypres salient in March-June, 1918, was received by the shifting garrison of Brussels with little enthusiasm. Would it not tend to prolong the War? The German advance into France was spectacular, but it was paid for by an appalling death-roll. The hospitals at Brussels were filled to overflowing with wounded and dying men. The Austrians who were brought from the Italian front to replenish the depleted battalions, quarrelled openly with the Prussians, and in some cases had to be surrounded in a barrack square and shot down.
The first real check to the German Army in its second march on Paris—that which followed its crossing of the Marne near Dormans—was prophetically greeted by the Bruxellois as the turning of the tide. The Emperor had gone thither from the Hotel Impérial in order to witness and follow the culminating march on Paris. But Foch now struck with his reserves, and the head of the tortoise was nipped off. The driving back of the Germans over the Marne coincided with the Belgian National Fête of July 21. Not since 1914 had this fête been openly observed. But on this day in 1918, the German police made no protest when a huge crowd celebrated the fête day in every church and every street. Vivien herself, smiling and laughing as she had not done since Bertie's death, attended the service in Sainte-Gudule and joined in singing La Brabançonne in place of Te Deum, laudamus. In the streets and houses of Brussels every piano, every gramophone was enrolled to play the Marseillaise, Vers l'Avenir, and La Brabançonne, the Belgian national anthem (uninspiring words and dreary tune). From this date onwards—July 21—the German débacle proceeded, with scarcely one day's intermission, with never a German regain of lost ground.
When the Americans had retaken St. Mihiel on September 14, then did Belgians boldly predict that their King would be back in Brussels by Christmas. But their prophecies were outstripped by events. Already, in the beginning of October, the accredited German Press in Belgium was adjuring the Belgians not to be impatient, but to let them evacuate Belgium quietly. At the end of October, Minna von Stachelberg told Vivien that she and the other units of the German Red Cross had received instructions to leave and hand over their charges to the Belgian doctors and nurses. The two women took an affectionate farewell of each other, vowing they would meet again—somewhere—when the War was over. British wounded now began to cease coming into Brussels, so Vivie was free to attend to her own affairs.
Enormous quantities of German plunder were streaming out of Belgium by train, by motor, in military lorries, in carts and waggons. Nearly all this belonged to the officers, and the already-rebellious soldiers broke out in protestations. "Why should they who had done all the fighting have none of the loot?" So they won over the Belgian engine-drivers—delighted to see this quarrel between the hyenas—and held up the trains in the suburban stations north of Brussels. There were pitched battles which ended always in the soldiers' victory.
The soldiers then would hold auctions and markets of the plunder captured in the trains and lorries. They were in a hurry to get a little money to take back with them to Germany. Vivie, who had laid her plans now as to what to do after the German evacuation of Brussels, attended these auctions. She was nearly always civilly treated, because so many German soldiers had known her as a friend in hospital and told other soldiers. At one such sale she bought a serviceable motor-car for 750 francs; at another drums of petrol.
She had provided herself with funds by going to her mother's bank and reopening the question of the deposited jewels and plate. Now that the victory of the Allies seemed certain, the bank manager was more inclined to make things easy for her. He had the jewels and plate valued—roughly—at £3,000; and although he would not surrender them till the will could be proved and she could show letters of administration, he consented on behalf of the bank to make her a loan of 30,000 francs.
On November 10th, a German soldier who followed Vivien about with humble fidelity since she had cured him of a bad whitlow—and also because, as he said, it was a joy to speak English once more—for he had been a waiter at the Savoy Hotel—came to her in the Boulevard d'Anspach and said "The Red flag, lady, he fly from Kommandantur. With us I think it is Kaput." This was what Vivien had been waiting for. Asking the man to follow her, she first stopped outside a shop of military equipment, and after a brief inspection of its goods entered and purchased a short, not too flexible riding-whip, with a heavy handle. Then as the trams were densely crowded, she walked at a rapid pace—glancing round ever and again to see that her German soldier was following—up the Boulevard du Jardin Botanique and along the Rue Royale until she came to the Hotel Impérial. Here she halted for a minute to have the soldier close behind her; then gave the revolving door a turn and found herself and him in the marble hall once built for Mrs. Warren's florid taste. "Call the Manager," she said—trying not to pant—to two Belgian servants who came up, a porter and a lift man. The Manager—he who had ejected her and her mother in 1915—was fortunately a little while in appearing. He was really packing up with energy so as to depart with all the plunder he could transport before the way of escape was closed. This little delay enabled Vivien to get her breath and resume an impressive calm.